NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police on Wednesday wrote to more then 10 agencies, including the BSES and DJB, to get documents and details related to the building in Mundka where a major fire had broken out last week and claimed the lives of 27 people, officials said.
Building owner Manish Lakra and two brothers -- Vijay and Harish Goel -- who rented two floors in the building to run their CCTV camera and router manufacturing and assembling company and in whose office the fire is suspected to have started, were arrested.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer) Sameer Sharma said about 15 documents related to the building and the Goel brothers' company have been obtained from the three.
"We have sent letters to more then 10 agencies, including Delhi Jal Board and BSES among others, to get more documents and details related to the company and building to also ascertain if any fake fire NOC was obtained by them," he said.
The officer said during investigation, it has emerged that there was a change-over switchboard for electricity connection on the first floor of the building where cardboards and other materials were dumped which may have caused the fire to spread quickly.
But, the picture will become clear after the forensic reports are received.
"After a preliminary inquiry, it was found that the building was congested due to storage of CCTV cameras and routers, workstations, and offices. Steel sheets were used to separate the staircase from floors and partitions inside the building were used for storage," Sharma said.
Police have recovered 27 bodies from the building.
As of Sunday, 14 of them had been identified as women and six as men.
Nineteen people are still missing.
To ascertain the identity of the dead and trace those who are missing, police are trying to track the location of their mobile phones, an official said.
The blood samples of the Goel brothers have also been taken as part of the investigation, he said.
Lakra was arrested from Ghevra Mod while he was en route to Haridwar in Uttarakhand on Sunday, two days after the incident.
He was running a real estate business and also owned a shop on the ground floor of the building, police said, adding that his family members are yet to be traced.
Lakra used to live in a two-room-kitchen house with his mother, wife and two children on the fourth floor of the same building.
They managed to escape to the adjacent building when the fire broke out, police had earlier said.
The AAP on Wednesday held Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta and his predecessors Manoj Tiwari and Satish Upadhyaya responsible for the death of 27 people in the Mundka fire tragedy and demanded that a case of "unintentional murder" be lodged against them.
The Arvind Kejriwal-led party alleged that the BJP-ruled North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) allowed the unauthorised construction of the building, where the massive fire broke out on May 13, as well as industrial activities on its premises, in violation of rules as bribes were paid for it.
It demanded that a probe be conducted to ascertain who took the bribes.
The demand by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) came a day after the NDMC, following the Mundka fire incident, suspended three officials, including a licensing inspector, in the Narela zone for "prima facie" laxity on their part.
"With the suspension of these three MCD officials, it has been proved that BJP president Adesh Gupta, his predecessors Manoj Tiwari and Satish Upadhyaya are responsible for the death of the 27 people," AAP spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj told a press conference here.
He said the NDMC let "unauthorised" industrial activity continue in the building where the fire broke out even though a Supreme Court-appointed committee had sealed it.
The unauthorised industrial activity continued there because the building owner Manish Lakra, who has been arrested in connection with the case, was "a BJP man" and had close links with the leaders of the saffron party, including Master Azad Singh, the uncle of West Delhi MP Parvesh Verma, Bharadwaj charged.
Upadhyaya, Tiwari and Gupta have been the successive Delhi BJP presidents during the time the building was being constructed, when unauthorised commercial activities began on its premises and when the fire tragedy occurred, he pointed out.
"Whenever we talked about corruption in the MCD and its building department, they came out to defend during their respective terms.
Why was Gupta giving a twist to the fire incident? Did he take a bribe?" Bharadwaj asked.
"They are responsible for the deaths of the 27 people. We demand that an FIR be lodged against them for unintentional murder and a probe conducted to ascertain if the bribe went only to their hands or did they share it with top BJP leaders also," he said.
On the BJP's accusation that the Delhi government had given permission for opening a liquor shop in the building, the AAP leader said the excise department gave its approval to the shop as the then assistant commissioner of the NDMC's Narela zone had issued a "false" no-objection certificate in 2016, stating that the building could be used for commercial activities.